The Ballad of Virginia Hardwick
by Sincerely Marigold
Summary: This short story draws from the love life of a young James Wilkins as first explored in my story, "A Long and Lonely Mile". It discusses the history of the Wilkins Family and the Hardwick Family, the birth of the city of Waterford, SC and the effect that Wilkins had on his community when he joined the loyalist colonial militia.
1. Part 1

Waterford, South Carolina

2005

The exterior walls of the Waterford Museum were paper thin. So thin, in fact, that Emmet Casey did not need an alarm clock. Every morning at 5:15 AM, his wife would rise and tend to her garden without fail. He could hear every snip of her shears, every scrape of her rusty trowel against the black soil and even catch tiny gurgles in the movement of sugar water from pitcher to feeder when their daughter noticed either crystallization or a scarcity of hummingbirds. He knew when things were going well and when she was discouraged. Although Saffron was only a Casey through marriage, she had adopted that simple, telling habit of humming when she was satisfied and mumbling when she was not. Those annual visits from the Stone Family stirred more mumbling and grumbling from Saffron than any other event.

They would always visit on the Saturday preceding Easter when the garden was in full and glorious bloom. This should have induced less anxiety from Saffron than in the transitionary seasons of the year. Emmet was not completely baffled at first to see this response from his wife. His nerves were ignited by their landlords' visit, too, but by the lack of dusting on the displays and the stocking of the shelves in the downstairs giftshop. Their listless teenage daughter was always too busy with schoolwork, washing dishes at the café down the street or, more realistically, preparing for derbies at Benny Martin's roller rink. This was one battle that they would have to fight alone.

Most of the flowers that Saffron tended to were perennials and they required both eradication and replacement at the beginning of the Spring. But there was one plant in her garden, an accident of nature, a lesser known wonder of the historical city that was at least as old as the Waterford Museum and the Casey Schoolhouse. Saffron had laughed when Alice Stone told her about it. Climbing rose bushes that lived to be fifty were considered to be record breakers. But those sturdy spirals of branches, weathered, brown and aggressively armed with thorns, had seen countless seasons as had the rustic trellis that the arms of the plant had locked into an impenetrable embrace.

Despite its prospective age, the roses that the plant bore could not be rivaled by any other rosebush in Waterford. Bountifully they grew, fat, fragrant, bursting with petals that were antiqued shade of snow white. It should have been Saffron's prized possession. Heaven knows, Alice Stone showed more concern for it that she did her own daughter. That being said, the rose bush gave her hell and was impossible to prune without those needle-sharp thorns biting through her leather gloves.

"You'll be the death of me," Saffron audibly grumbled, binding a stubborn branch with a thick bit of twine. The pungent smell of coffee, that her husband _attempted_ to brew at this time of day, filled her nose. "If that man's mud water doesn't get to me first." She stood upright and slipped off her gardening gloves. There were a few pricks here and there. The battle had been more intense this time than the inflicted wounds, thank heavens. Before she could exhale her relief, the muscular branch broke free and swatted Saffron clean across the arm. Beads of blood appeared from wrist to elbow and Saffron made for the side screen door, cursing all the way.

"Our daughter found something that will appease the Stones!" Pale-haired Emmet sang as his wife stormed past him and towards the deep metal basin that barely passed for a kitchen sink.

The water rumbled as it traveled through the walls until finally, some umpteen seconds later, it erupted through the spout, spilling and sputtering across Saffron's reddened arm. She ignored her husband and focused on drawing in meditative breaths. Every room in the museum possessed that telltale old building smell and when those notes mingled with the earthy undertones of the fluoride-rich tap water, her emotions leveled out. It cannot be helped. When one lives in a historic district long enough, "home" smells like decay.

"I don't want Marigold rummaging through the attic anymore," she closed her eyes and let the tepid water work its wonders, "the floorboards above the bayonet display need reinforcing. Just one misstep in the wrong place and it'll be bye, bye birdie!" Her husband shuttered at the mental image and Saffron internalized the same response. "What did she find?"

Emmet wove through the kitchen to the pea-green Crosley refrigerator in the corner and pulled a thin, journal-like book that had been balanced on its partially domed roof, "Do you remember when Orville Stone told us to keep our eyes peeled for any documents pertaining to the Hardwick Family?"

Saffron tried not to think about the attic until she absolutely had to. Sorting through it was, indeed, a ceaseless project, one that the Caseys only oversaw when the displays needed refreshing. Waterfordians would orphan bits of history on their doorstep during their spring cleaning sessions or when someone passed away. This was additional to the legions of old chests and boxes filled with history that the museum, which was once the Hardwick House, had come with. "How could I forget their obsession with their distant relatives?" She sneered as Emmet approached her, book in hand. It was a beautiful artifact with leather binding and only partially yellowed pages. "They want primary sources, Em, from the American Revolution. That book looks too contemporary."

"This was written in the 1800's, so it isn't exactly a primary source, but hear me out," he stretched his arms out like an enthused salesman, nodding his blonde head so hard with each word that his round glasses traveled down ski-jump bridge of his upturned nose. "Oral Tradition! The more years you pack onto a story, the more it changes."

She didn't take the book. She remembered, word for word, what it was their landlords sought. "Put it back and lock the door behind you this time. I won't have Marigold and Giselle up there drooling over old portraits of men in ponytails and tight breeches. That's just… not normal."

"She loves history," Emmet declared, "she's a Casey! You know the Stone's daughter, right? I saw her and Orville at the farmer's market last week. The kid is four years old, and she talked my ear off about this story that her father told her about the Hardwick family on the drive over. Families have heroes. I can still remember the first time that Marigold asked to learn more about the schoolhouse. She has Annabelle, little Tristan Stone has Virginia Hardwick and this," he thumped his knuckles rhythmically against the book's cover, "is as close to a firsthand account of her life that a person can find."

With some reluctance, Saffron held out her hand. The cover flipped over with ease. The pages were cool to the touch, musty and aromatic in their advanced age. "The Ballad of Virginia Hardwick," she read aloud, "you can't give this to a four-year-old, Em. What if it turns out that Virginia was one of the Hardwicks who-"

"-what if? What if?" Emmet teased, "What if Annabelle was a hunchbacked dwarf with twenty toes and a tail? It is our right to know where we come from. Everyone in town who funds this museum and helps to keep it going feels the same way. I mean, heck! It might distract Alice from seeing what you have done to her crawling rose bush!"

"More like what her crawling rose bush has done to me." Saffron leaned over the counter, kneading her fists into her eye sockets until the soreness of fatigue became nothing more than tiny explosions of color and light behind her eyelids. "I need coffee." Without looking, she could tell that Emmet had turned to prepare her a cup. "No. Strong stuff. From Coffee n' San-tea."

"Will you at least look the book over and tell me what you think?"

She removed the pressure from her eyes and blinked, watching the book materialize on the countertop. "If it will get you off of my case. I'll be back before we open."

The café was abuzz with locals, most of whom were heading off for work. Saffron placed her order and became situated by the window. The book appeared to be a light read, if she could get past the sheer lack of legibility and the pages that had been lightly stained with time. She knew how to handle documents with care and kept her coffee on the furthest point of the windowsill when it arrived. As the natural light of morning mingled with the electric glow of a nearby floor lamp, she opened to the title page and revisited the book's grassy breath. It reminded her vaguely of opening the door to the museum where her lungs inhaled and exhaled ghosts, the passage of years, sweet decay and preservation—history.

The Ballad of Virginia Hardwick

Part One

Our world is composed of cities great and small. These tiny bursts of population are scattered on the globe's blank canvas and connected by pathways like constellations on an astronomer's star map. The birth of a city is not unlike the birth of a star and is both a gradual and an instantaneous phenomenon. This bondage begins with a settler, a neighbor and the incentive for the neighborhood to grow. Waterford, South Carolina was born this way. It sprung up from the earth around two neighbors, two quiet homes on a dirt road that was destined to mother a community. These two households, the Hardwick Family and the Wilkins Family were dependent upon one another for survival long before Waterford gained its name.

Although in time, additional alliances would form, loyalties would waiver and arguments would commence, the promise to look after one another remained intact for these two families. It took two generations of children bearing the Hardwick and Wilkins name for this trend to finally break:

Virginia Hardwick was born on Christmas Eve in the year of 1762. Her father, who was absent by way of inebriation for most of her childhood, was not present for his daughter's birth. Mrs. Wilkins arrived without delay and assumed the same role that Mrs. Hardwick had nine years prior when young James Wilkins entered the world. He would be the first child that Virginia would meet, and he watched over her with the same adoration and curiosity that an older brother might. They played, they laughed and when Virginia was old enough to speak, they spoke, joked and bickered. Most importantly, however, they grew. Everything that they believed, hoped and feared was somehow reliant on the other's constant presence.

As he changed from a young boy to a teenager, James found other influences and his interests wandered into territories that Virginia did not understand. He became combative, disillusioned and political. His endeavors in the senate and the loyalist colonial militia fueled Virginia's curiosity about the world that he had left her for. A hidden corner of his heart remained on reserve for Virginia. Visions of her hazel eyes and those soft, long strands of ebony hair that framed her sweet face flowed relentlessly through his mind. But Virginia did not know this. James was like a precious gem that she had misplaced in a wide field and could catch glimmers of on a sunny day, but every time she moved closer to that distant speck of light, it would vanish. If only she could better understand the terrain and map out the void that he was lost within, perhaps they could return to a simpler time when she was his only problem and his only solution.

When Virginia was fourteen, James left Waterford and did not return for six long months. She traded her books, her questions and what scraps of news she could sweep from her father's table when he was too drunk to see straight—and prayed. Until the flesh on her knees grew raw from kneeling, she would pray for his safety amidst the brutal conflict that she had read about. She was too busy pleading, begging that he would be shielded from blade and ammunition alike, that Virginia did not realize the treasure that had grown within her heart. She did not know how deeply she loved him until the day that he returned, and she saw the same emotion reflected in his eyes.

On the outside of the Hardwick House, there stood a burly white trellis that was home to a climbing rose bush. In the springtime, it brought forth the most spectacular ivory blooms. The higher the buds were on the trellis, the better their chances were of receiving optimum sunlight and growing into marvels. Virginia was returning from church one morning when she caught sight of a perfect rose, just out of plucking range. If she stood on the tips of her toes and used the longest pair of scissors in her kitchen, the lovely flower would grace the center of her family's table. She filled a vase with water, found the scissors and a stepping stool just in case. The tips of the scissors barely grazed the bottom of the stem when a long shadow covered Virginia's field of sight and a pair of rough hands snapped the branch in two right where she had intended.

"Mind your fingers, Ginger," a low whisper traveled on his breath, caressing and warming her face like a ray of sunlight, "roses have thorns."

Virginia turned, "I may be shorter than you, James Wilkins. But that doesn't make me any less intelligent." Her words were mocking, but her voice was just as tender and sweet as his had been. With a laugh, she held him tightly and before she could understand their origin, their depth, tears rolled from her eyes and onto the red wool of his coat. The rose toppled to the ground like an afterthought. He cradled the young girl's head where it rested, just below his heart. "You were here every day, James. Every day for my entire life and then you left me without warning. You must tell me before you leave again. And how long you will be away for. You owe me that much."

Her searched and searched but could not find an apology that would match his grief for how immediately he had left her and how brief this meeting would be. He held onto Virginia until she stopped crying, gave his warning as she had requested and vanished the next morning for the remainder of her fourteenth year on earth.

The next time that James visited Waterford was on a snowy Christmas morning the day after Virginia turned fifteen. The Hardwicks were returning from their devotionals and saw him waiting in the street with snowflakes peppering his dark curls. The smile that he wore when Virginia raced across the whiteness and into his arms acted as a prophecy for Mr. and Mrs. Hardwick. Their daughter would be the wife of a soldier and above all, the two families, after decades of merely residing alongside one another would join together as one. That was the happiest day of Virginia's life, listening intently to their future being decided as they warmed themselves by the fire.

He left two days later. This time, he wrote to Virginia, postponing the arrangements again and again, until those wishes scattered on the breeze. Disillusionment befell her, and it worsened as her father's love for the drink turned violent. Virginia was sent away from Waterford to live with her uncle in Pembroke. The restraints that her overbearing mother had placed on Virginia loosened. In the months that followed, she tested her uncle's indifference. She exchanged books with neighbors, gossiped with the townsfolk every chance she got and continued to expand her knowledge of the world around her. But she did not let go of those childish dreams, that the young man who was so eager to break away from the increasingly treasonous town of Waterford would come home to her.

James sought her out once more. Her uncle directed him to where she spent most of her days, in the back row of the church where she split her time between reading about the war and praying for a peaceful resolve. He could see her from the outside, kneeling at the altar. Her hair was covered, but several rogue pieces had fallen out to frame the elegant curvature of her cheek. She did not know that he was there, not until he approached her and touched the petals of a single white rose to her clasped hands.

"It is always when I think that you have forgotten me that you appear again," said Virginia. "Why must be so cruel to me?"

"Wars and weddings do not blend well," he saw the top of a folded newsletter sticking out of the pages of her bible, "you are smart. You know this."

At last, she opened her hands to the flower. "How long?"

"A day."

Virginia shook her head. "That is not what I meant. How long, James Wilkins, until you give me all of your days?"

He straightened out his back, pulled Virginia to her feet and took her in his arms. There, at the altar, he made this solemn vow. "Every chance I can find, when it is safe to do so, I will come to you with a white rose in my hands. One day, dear Virginia, one day soon, I will arrive with a red rose and you will know, without so much as a single word that it will mark the beginning of our life together."

 **A/N: So, I advertised this in the short story collection that I posted last week and was going to make it live once my other short story,** ** _Marigold and the Historian_** **was completed. That hardly seemed fair. Wilkins needs some love, too! As it stands right now, they will both be "short stories" and roughly the length of "Only Through Victory". I realize that I have a lot of different projects going at once, but they do kind of all bleed into one big narrative and none of them, I repeat none of them are "abandoned" by any stretch of the imagination. It's just my ADHD at work, I guess. Lol. I don't mind having them going simultaneously if you don't. Happy reading! X**


	2. Part 2

Part Two

There were many things that Virginia loved about Pembroke. She sought out the wise counsel of Reverend Oliver, appreciated the humor of the Howard Family and tried everything in her power to express kindness and gratitude towards her uncle for taking her in. It was a splendid place to call home, full of people who knew and cared for her, but it never replaced Waterford. Home was not far away, just an hour's walk down the road, but it seemed to Virginia to be a distant world, despite the many similarities that both towns shared. Seasons felt different in Waterford. The winter was somehow less brutal, and the summer was somehow fairer. Moonbeams bent closer to the earth in Waterford, illuminating dark corners and making them less formidable. She confided in James, admitting her homesickness to him and him alone. After the war, they would marry, live and die in the same town on the same street where they were born. It was their destiny to do so and he signed each of his letters with that promise.

It was decided several months in advance that Virginia would return home to visit her parents on her sixteenth birthday. This, apart from a highly anticipated visit from James at the end of the summer, was the highlight of her year. He understood her excitement, if only in part. Imagining the world through a woman's eyes, even one who was so dear to him, proved challenging for James. He rode past Waterford frequently and without sparing it a second glance or sentimental thought. Virginia's world was so much smaller than his, limited to where her feet were planted and where she desired to be. The brotherly impulse to boast of his travels and belittle her simplicity was stifled by his love for her. They spent his short visit on the outskirts of Pembroke, further than Virginia dared to travel on any given day.

"Which town is this rose from?" She asked, breathing in the white petals' sweet perfume and sitting down on a patch of grass.

"I snatched that from Mr. Osterman's garden just outside of Hillsboro," James replied, removing his glove and pointing to a fresh bruise on his wrist, "he chased me off with a wooden stick!"

Virginia pulled harshly on his forearm, sending him tumbling to her side. "You're lying!" She laughed and jostled his shoulder the way that a younger brother might do, certainly not the future bride of a well-respected soldier!

"Me? Lie? To you?! Inconceivable!"

"No man would chase off another man with a wooden stick for tampering with a rosebush! My guess is that it was Mrs. Osterman with a broom and not only did she attempt to rap your knuckles before shooing you away with your tail tucked properly between your legs, she spooked your horse and sent you crashing into," she pulled out a white feather and a bit of straw from his dark curls, "a chicken coop. My, my! How debonair you are, Captain Wilkins!"

"Ah! What a shame! You were so close, too," he chest swelled, pridefully, "it was Mrs. Osterman's mother. With a feather duster. And you needn't worry about any chickens, my dear, because it was a goat pen that I fell into!" He watched Virginia laugh and kiss his injury. The truth was, he received it during a nearly fatal encounter on the field when a Continental had disarmed him just the other day. The rose came from the Hardwick's home in Waterford. It was a light lie, a gentle one that protected her from sadness and worry. He covered it, countered it immediately with the truest words that he knew, "I love you." Virginia looked up, her hazel eyes widened and glistened as they met his. James could feel his heart begin to race from the disorienting adrenaline that can only come from such a confession. "I wanted to wait until after the war to tell you this. There are no sweeter words to hear for the first time on one's wedding day. I could not simply write them in one of my letters to you, but in truth, I don't know when the war is going to end. Or if it ever will. I want to believe that I will survive, but every day I am pushed a little bit closer to my breaking point. I need to find my strength and it begins right here, with you. I've heard it said that a heart cannot recover if it is given love and that love is then cut short… Am I being selfish, Virginia?"

"No," she shook her head in protest, softly touching her hands to each corner of his face, "no. You are being brave." She was fifteen, he was twenty-four. Still, their very first kiss was what one might expect from two very young children in a schoolyard. Their hearts were fluttering, their eyes were opened wide, staring innocently across the other's face as their lips touched, merely touched and balanced upon one another like a butterfly on a petal.

"Then why am I so afraid?"

Virginia laughed bashfully, recovering and straightening her smile in a matter of seconds. Of all the friendly faces and caring eyes that Virginia had come to know and rely upon, his was the most familiar. It didn't matter if they were in Pembroke, far across the sea or seated side by side upon some distant star, he was her comfort, he was her home. His hands were rough against her cheek, chapped and worn from his service to King George. Those same hands that held her when she was not even a day old, assisted her in taking her first steps and now wrote her love letters and brought her roses as tokens of his affection, had also delivered swift and sometimes brutal death to her fellow citizens. Indeed, it was a trying season for love to blossom. Impossible, some might say. But she loved those weathered hands and the friendly stars in his eyes that no tear could reach, nor cloud could cover. She loved the silly, boyish side of James that he kept hidden away from the rest of the world. She could see through his façade, his severity and seriousness. Even now, she saw him waiting, pure and simple on the other side of his fear.

"You needn't be afraid of anything," Virginia whispered, levitating on his warm breath, suspended inches from his beautiful face. "There is no force in all of creation that is mightier than love and no other gift, greater or smaller, that I can give to you in exchange for your heart." She was the first to move this time, leaning into his chest with just enough gentle force to guide his back to rest against the smooth ground. He guided her, too, past the backdrop of the tall grasses that glowed amber and gold in the evening light. "I love you, James Wilkins," she gazed lovingly upon him, touching her hand to his cheek and her lips to his brow. Eventually, with some guidance, they found the sweet sanctuary of his mouth. Softly it began, in full consciousness, with the same sense of innocence as before. It was only a kiss and yet, neither James nor Virginia had felt so close to another soul in all their lives. They closed their eyes, removing themselves from the rest of the world and falling deeper into comfort; slipping away into a mutual dream that they would never fully awaken from.

"I'd rather see you stay in Pembroke," he told Virginia when she surfaced, "than return to Waterford where your father is. What if he tries to harm you like last time?"

"Oh, go and spoil everything, why don't you?" She teased. "I've been away from home for far too long. Don't you understand that? Don't you miss Waterford, too? I will only be there for a week. Two at the most, if Father can stay away from the drink for that long. You've said so yourself, I am smart. I'll know when it is time for me to come back here."

"Ginger," James began, watching closely as she lay beside him and pulled a blade of grass from the ground to weave between her fingers, "I know how mundane your life in Pembroke is, but at least you are out of harm's way here. Some of the men who I ride with are heavy drinkers, too, I have seen firsthand how quickly events can escalate from recreational to dire." He saw her playful scowl in his periphery. "There will be no persuading you, will there?"

"One week," she reiterated, "possibly two at the end of December. Nothing will happen, James and if I even find myself the slightest bit wary, I will return to Pembroke without delay. You have my word." He snatched the bit of grass from Virginia's grasp and moved her into his embrace. She fought against him for a moment or two before giving up her playful protest. There was no shelter on earth so safe and sacred as his arms. She made herself at home and seemed to dissolve into his chest and James was glad.

Of every farewell that they had shared up to this point, this one was by far the most trying. They stayed in the same place and the nearer the hours strayed to when James would have to depart, they held on tighter and kissed deeper than before. This wordless mission, to memorize everything from the taste and texture of her lips to the prickle of her eyelashes against his cheek when she held him close, could have carried on well into the morning. Her pale flesh radiated, stealing light from the overhanging stars and envious moon. Her soft hair appeared obsidian, a truer black than the night sky and every strand possessed a prism of colors that danced and twisted with each illumination. He loved her, surely. Every breath that she had ever drawn, every space that she had ever occupied was precious to him, her very existence was sacred. She was his, from the moment that she was born, he was destined to be her guardian, her truest and only love.

"If anything were to happen to you," James said before rising from their refuge in the grass, "what's more—anything that I could prevent, I would surely die."

Virginia wished that he would not speak of such things but held her tongue. It was easy for them to bicker, a natural impulse that they resorted to when there was nothing left to say, nothing left to face but the truth. "Please stay," she pleaded. They faced each other simply, very simply. In their minds they were clinging to one another so forcefully that their spirits were shattering midair. "Let me ride with you a while, at least. I can find my way back."

"Virginia," he shook his head slowly, "it is time."

"I wish to follow you," tears pooled and churned in her eyes, "to every town, every encampment, every battlefield."

James grinned, balancing his forehead against Virginia's, "A battlefield is no place for a rose, my love. Stay here, where you are safe. Give me the incentive to fight and a home to return to," one tender kiss later, he stepped out of their sphere of comfort and into the world, but not without looking back for one final glance, "Every time I look at you, I remember that there is beauty in the world."

With James gone, home beckoned even louder than before. Virginia collected letters from her parents, the Wilkins Family and on several joyous occasions, she received sweet notes from James each one a profound and elongated ode to how deeply he loved her. As the sweltering golden days of summer stepped aside to make way for the fall, she discovered a promising pattern in the notes from Waterford. At the beginning of October, well over two months earlier than she had anticipated such an invitation, Virginia learned that her father's grief for driving his only child away had deepened to the point of renouncement. He had sworn off the drink, repented and, to Virginia's dismay, enlisted. He was a changed man, stable and although Virginia was uncertain of where his newfound loyalty tended and how this might affect her engagement, she met the news with excitement and joy.

James started to receive letters from Waterford several weeks later. Her prayers to return home had been answered, but at the expense of her family's kinship with their neighbors, it seemed. Where his rose was rooted and flourishing did not matter to James and with minimal convincing, he eclipsed her love for Waterford. They would marry after the war, even if they had to elope and leave the Carolinas for good. It was a heavy secret. Sweet, but weighted. Virginia picked away at the surface, trying to understand what caused her father to join the Continentals. What kind of a God would condemn her young heart to be torn between the man she loved and the father she honored? God was who she turned to, prayer swallowed her questions whole and she became that lonely girl once more, praying all day at the back of the chapel until her knees bled.

Training was brutal on her father. This was to be expected. Unlike James who stayed the course, he left camp one night without warning, crawled into a liquor bottle for several hours and returned to Waterford on a crisp autumn morning. The plan, as Virginia understood it, was to take his family and head out to sea without a trace, so that no one would question or know of his desertion. Mrs. Hardwick saw him coming down the road from her bedroom window, dragging his feet behind him and carrying a pistol in his hand. She had seen that look in his eye so many times before and knew what she must do to put Virginia's safety before her own. She locked the front door, opened her window and cried for help from Mr. and Mrs. Wilkins.

"I need you to take Tandy and ride," Mrs. Hardwick told her daughter, "don't bother yourself with her tack, just ride her as far away from here as you can go."

She meant, of course, the family's tawny pony who knew the route to Pembroke without having to be led. As much as Virginia wanted to stay and help both families with the confrontation, she knew that her intrepid mount would not stop once she was on her back. She traveled lightly, bringing only a shawl to wrap herself in and the small black bible wherein she stored each letter and pressed each rose from James. She held tightly to it and prayed throughout the sad, albeit uneventful journey.

Her uncle hadn't changed the guestroom one bit, it remained precisely tailored to Virginia's liking, as though he expected the plans with her family to fall through. Cold and sore from her early morning bareback ride, Virginia stretched out on her lovely, blue quilt and waited. Her mind was still too full, too active to allow her to doze. With the bible and its precious contents pressed to her heart, she invited God to speak with her for a while, but God never came. Silence permeated the space. It was the kind of silence that always made its appearance before the earth began to shake and the walls of comfort surrounding its witnesses crumble into ruins.

"Lord," she whispered again to no avail. "James," this time she garnered a reply. That bold, lyrical voice that she could uncover in any crowd, no matter how vast, grabbed hold of her heart and did not let go. His words were distorted by window glass and the walls of her uncle's home. She caught fragments of what was being said; but could not string them together and make meaning of them. He sounded pained, ridiculed, helplessly fighting against an incoming storm of angry insults from his commander. She wanted to see him, she wanted to help. Pembroke was just as peaceful as ever when she arrived at her uncle's door, but the scene that unfolded before Virginia when she drew back her curtain was drastically different than the sleepy village that he rode through no more than an hour prior.

"Get away from there," Virginia heard her uncle's sharp whisper from behind, "see to your chores like a good girl."

She heard him and planned to obey, but the army of redcoats and mounted cavalry that had descended upon the small town fascinated Virginia. "What are they doing here? Can I at least go outside and speak with James?"

"You will do nothing of the sort!" When his niece turned to leave, openly pained, he reached for her hand. "They are searching the town. For what or whom, I do not know. Keep your head down and try not to interfere. Those dragoons are not forgiving of insubordination."

As far as her chores were concerned, there were plenty of options. Virginia gravitated towards the kitchen, the part of the house that was nearest to where James and the enraged officer stood. She scrubbed quietly and listened, but his voice had long since vanished. When she was certain that her uncle was not nearby, she reached for the fabric window covering beside the table and stole a second glance at the outside world. No James. He seemed to have vanished amongst the orderly swarm of soldiers. They were knocking on doors and escorting the villagers from their homes and to the outside, where the cold morning was warming into early afternoon.

Their knock came in the same fashion. Virginia turned the corner to see who was calling upon them and found herself to be disappointed. If only it had been James who came to their door! He would have given them a better explanation; his gentle presence and kind words would have taken away the pain in her heart from having to abandon Waterford for a second and final time. Above all, if he had known that she was there, perhaps he could have spared the lives of the Hardwicks on that fateful day.


	3. Part 3

**Part 3**

Once when Virginia was much younger, when her father was just beginning to seek refuge from his uneventful home life at the tavern, her mother gave her a very special gift. It was not a toy that she would eventually grow out of, nor a trinket that would tarnish over time, but a piece of knowledge that would define the way she saw the world for all the remaining days of her life. An argument between her parents, one of their firsts, sent Virginia racing from their home in fear. Curiosity caused her to remain nearby and she hid between the side of her house and the trellis where her mother's roses spiraled and bloomed on their thorny stems. Not long after she found this safe haven, the door swung, ramming the side of the house and causing its very foundation to shake. Her father stormed outside and down the road, not seeing Virginia at all. Mrs. Hardwick started to call her name, but she did not emerge and remained undiscovered until the poor, flustered lady decided to search the garden.

"Ginger, please," she fumed, near tears, "I will have none of your games. Not today."

Virginia pressed her tiny face between the wooden rails, blinked and scooted over in the dirt, making a place for her mother to sit and hide herself. "Father won't be able to find us here. He walked right by me earlier."

Mrs. Hardwick looked away. She had to hide her tears and quick. It was up to her to dismiss the fear that her daughter was beginning to feel for the man who had always protected and loved her. But how? How could she possibly make a promise that she felt such little confidence in? She slid in beside Virginia and sat in the mud, the worries for her dress disappeared when she felt her daughter's head on her shoulder. The long strands of Virginia's uncovered hair flowed loosely into Mrs. Hardwick's lap like a waterfall. They were soft and black, black as her father's now receding waves. She was her father's daughter, brooding, reclusive, and smart. They both had the sweetest and kindest of hearts, but one would have to learn the art of picking through thorns to reach them, unharmed. She longed to preserve that sweetness, to keep that barricade of thorns from rendering her inaccessible to the rest of the world.

"I don't understand how he could yell at you like that," said Virginia, clutching to her mother, "I hope he never comes back. He doesn't deserve a family or a home after treating you so unkindly!"

It was a terrible thing to say. Unspeakable, really. She could have reprimanded her just as harshly as Mr. Hardwick might have and it still would have been justified. But deep down, she felt the exact same way and was deeply guilted by having such thoughts towards her husband. "The world can be very confusing and unfair sometimes," she told her, calmly, hunting for answers and comfort in her own words. "It can take the people we love and turn them into complete strangers. Your father would not be able to recognize himself right now if he were in his right mind. We have both witnessed how frightening he can be, but for those few, small outbursts, we have years and years of his love and kindness to revisit. He loves us, and we love him. We mustn't hide from the people we love when they are in peril. We must pray for them." It was a cramped space, Mrs. Hardwick just barely managed to turn and kneel. Virginia did the same, "pray with me."

Theirs was a peculiar sanctuary, a far cry from the clean, white church that stood across the street. Virginia looked for God in all of her trials, in every space that she visited from that day forward. She learned not to judge her family, the villagers and even James. She merely loved them all and knew that their creator was constant and helpful, even when she could not be.

The people of Pembroke were hardly uneasy as they were led from their homes. Just how many soldiers had been called upon hinted that it would be a brief assembly, a search through everyone's homes for traitors, perhaps. Virginia could not tell. The location, the church, relieved most of the anxiety from her and all the others. How could any harm befall them in the house of God? Virginia retrieved her shawl and bible, her only qualm being that they might be there for a while as the British conducted their search. She and her uncle had nothing to hide and although he was out of sight, she felt comfort in knowing that James was nearby. Everyone conversed loudly, brashly while Virginia retreated to the back window where she could watch for him.

She saw him once and nevermore, riding with indifference, flanked on either side by his comrades. He scarcely looked like the James she knew or the James that she imagined, serving his cause with strength and pride. This man was almost foreign to her, a fearful underling quietly awaiting his next order, dreading what might come to pass should his efforts come up short. Without fully rationalizing what she was doing, Virginia abandoned the window for the altar and consoled her beloved the way that her mother had taught her, through prayer. The altercation with Colonel Tavington, the betraying words of her uncle and the cruel, unjust deciding of their fate did not rouse Virginia from her conversation with God.

Her knees were grounded at the heart of the tempest. She retreated into awareness only once, moments before the heat and the smoke made its final claim on her mortal form. On the ground in front of her, the bible containing her letters and roses could be found. Virginia reached for it and pressed it near to her heart. She lived for hardly a minute more, just long enough to make a final plea. For her own selfless soul, this time. A second chance, what that might mean, she left it open-ended. All around her, parents and guardians alike were shielding their children from the flames. It did not occur to her uncle to give Virginia such protection, he was too preoccupied with trying to break through the windows when she fell. In appearance, she was not so different from the protective elders, the final decision that she made with purpose was to have the book and all that it represented, outlive her. The bible, its words, James' love notes and the petals of each lovingly preserved rose all witnessed her final heartbeat, her final prayer. Never before had the villagers felt so abandoned by their God. Never before had Virginia felt His loving presence so fully.

Facing Virginia after the death of her uncle would not be easy. Yet, in the days that followed, James found that his heart cried out for Waterford. He could not look at Tavington for days. The displacement was mutual, he had fulfilled his duty, thrown the torch and set the peaceful sanctuary ablaze. There were words of comfort that he resorted to, of course. Tiny antidotes that had some ring of truth to them. He was not the only man with a torch, the killings would have proceeded, and he would have either been shot and killed by the wicked colonel on the spot or marked for humiliation for the remainder of his career if he had not followed the order. Those locked inside were lost, anyway. It was not his fault and yet, it was. He had sworn his allegiance so dishonorably, so grotesquely, that he did not deserve to see sweet Virginia again. Still, he rode away from the encampment and towards home, carrying a white rose—a soft surrender, a statement to her innocence that meant more to him than any gesture of loyalty that he had ever made.

The houses were just as empty, just as vacant as the homes in Pembroke and it chilled him to the bone to witness such silence from afar. There was a gathering when he arrived, not inside the church, but in the graveyard. All dispersed, sparing James nothing more than a nod as they passed him in the street. He saw his mother and Mrs. Hardwick, staying behind, holding on to one another while standing over an open grave. The grave was Mr. Hardwick's, he assumed. Newly enlisted men were often thrown in the frontlines for buffers, a sad truth, or perhaps he simply drank himself to death. James never cared for Mr. Hardwick, but loved him from a distance the way that one might a toxic family member. He dismounted at the gate, removing his helmet as he approached the two women.

"Mother. Mrs. Hardwick, Ma'am," he touched the shoulder of Virginia's mother first, offering his embrace. The yellowed grass was covered by a thick ring of dirt where the earth's mouth opened. Now that he was here, he could volunteer his strength to help them complete the burial. James glanced inside at the coffin. It was modest, the same design that awaited every departed soul in Waterford. It was also delicate and small, much too small for Mr. Hardwick, but the exact height and proportions of his beloved Virginia who stood just high enough to touch her cheek to his heart. His knees buckled beneath him, his hands lifted from the mourners' shoulders and muffled his pained cry of realization.

"James," his own mother turned to him, clutching the face of her dear, inconsolable friend to her breast as she tried to reason with him and pull him in, too. "James."

"Not Virginia," the impact of this sudden pain was far too great, "not my love!" He dropped to the ground, immobile, gazing at the unadorned receptacle of wood. He had worshipped every footprint, every grain of sand, every flower and blade of grass that Virginia ever touched. The shape of her grave should have been unbearable and yet somehow, she made it beautiful, too, occupying the center in silence as the brown earth spilled outwards around her, like the petals of a newborn flower, begging for the sun. He loved her even now. "Why?" The cool sand slipped across his hand like silk. He loved it, too. Loved this small circumference of ground that Virginia would soon be eternally bound to. "How? She is only sixteen. She is healthy and strong. How could this have happened?!"

Mrs. Wilkins opened her mouth to speak, but she was silenced by Virginia's mourning mother. She had moved beyond the shock, that battle for understanding that James was currently lost within and into a sad, weighted darkness. Never before, on battlefield or surgeon's tent had he seen such pained eyes. "Have you heard of our neighbors in Pembroke? I sent her to her uncle that day. They were both… neither one survived, nobody did."

How he could still exist after hearing this without falling into the earth, shattering again and again until he was a finer dust than the soil beneath his knees, without becoming obliterated into complete nothingness, was surely a question without an answer. "No." The restraints on his voice, the solemn discipline that the army had given him melted away, revealing a frantic wail. "No! No! She returned to Waterford. She was not there that day! She was home! With you! Mrs. Hardwick, please! Look at me. Look at me! Are you certain that it was Virginia? Are you certain?"

"She was kneeling. Praying at the altar when she fell. The entire town perished, James. Only my Virginia would have gone with such sweetness and grace. I am certain," her hand moved beneath her dark, woolen shawl, revealing the blackened remains of a book. James would not accept it, so she placed it on the ground before him. "Will we all be lost to this war in the end?"

Guilt crushed him further and though he knew the women required his strength, he did not give it to them. Rose and bible in hand, he stepped into the grave, poured its petals over top the pinewood surface like rain and draped his arm over the coffin. He should have known that it would feel nothing like her and indeed, it was an uncomfortable object to hold. But he had held her, more or less, through every stage of life. He would regret not holding her now. If peace was what she required, James knew that she would not find it until after she gained some closure from the man who she trusted and loved with all of her heart and who had so deeply betrayed her.

There was a confession at the tip of his tongue, but James temporarily forgot how to speak, to think, to hear his mother's plea that he act with more composure and respect. Physically, he remained whole, but what his onlookers came to accept was that he was condensed to dust and needed to cover her for just a while longer. Nobody dared approach him, even after he emerged. Broken beyond speech, beyond tears and in a trance of tremendous sorrow, he closed the ground around her. Pile to shovel to grave. He watched her disappear. The petals and the bible, too. Every motion that he made contained memories that he would not forget, sorrow that he would carry forever and a prayer that aligned perfectly with Virginia's final prayer, for a second chance.

James later learned why Virginia's father was not present to bury his daughter. Her death had so enraged him that he reported once more, ready to kill any redcoat that might cross his path. Where her father sought vengeance, James sought solitude. The other dragoons distrusted him from the start, that did not change, the only real change that occurred was that James stopped looking for approval. During his final battle, he was half-present and worn, speaking up against Tavington's irrational orders only once. Even then, he fell short. It was a brutal fight, beginning with the promise of victory and ending with a turn for the worse. His strength began to falter, his will began to fade and in the end, he remembered Virginia's courage and faith.

Captain James Wilkins dismissed his instincts as a soldier, as a human with the incentive to survive and dismounted, kneeling amongst the dead on the battlefield, he began to pray. Comrade and opposer alike brushed past him, granting him this final moment of solace. Save for one—a man whose mind had been so tainted by anger and grief that he shot the praying redcoat in the back. A single, stone cold musket ball to the heart, that was all it took to bring him down. If there was pain, it was instantaneous, as familiar as drawing breath. The corporal stepped closer, satisfied by seeing the young man fall and by knowing that he was dead before he hit the ground. The helmet that James hadn't bothered to remove was still secured over his head, covering up his tight, dark curls. The shape of his face and the precise positioning of his handsome features, however, did not go unnoticed by Mr. Hardwick. He knew the young man, better than anyone on the battlefield, better than all the men who he served with combined.

His musket was abandoned, dropped without a second thought on the ground between them. "What have I done?" The black-haired continental raised one hand, catching the tears as they began to fall across his sallow, weathered face. James and Virginia were together so often that their parents and friends could glimpse subtle similarities in their features. The memories of who they were as children remained, too. "What has this war turned us into, my neighbor?" He knelt and pulled the strong, burly body of young James Wilkins into his arms, just as he did when he was only a babe. Those eyes of sea glass green looked past him, sightlessly into the heavens, "My son," Mr. Hardwick's voice trailed off as it was consumed by guilted tears, "Go now, sweet James. Virginia is waiting."

The same fate befell Virginia's unarmed father. It was noted in the letter to his wife that her husband was slain while cradling a fallen loyalist from Waterford in his arms. Both men returned home, each one a representative to a different cause and yet, they were buried as brethren on either side of Virginia's solitary grave. There they remain until the end of time, the city's first neighbors, two families that never became one through marriage, although each name is now scarcely spoken without the other in mind. A tradition was born from this tragedy, one that lasted for a hundred years and will carry on for a hundred more. The gesture of a single white rose from the hand of a Wilkins to the grave of a Hardwick remains a symbol of unity and a kinship that no quarrel, disagreement or wrong that one has done onto the other will ever undo or destroy.

Waterford, South Carolina

2016

Jake Casey was napping lightly on the reclining armchair at the center of his under-furnished living room. He was off duty from 4 AM to 4 PM, overworked and underpaid, the least appreciated officer in the county. It had been a challenging night to put it lightly, patrolling the long rows of metallic diners and rockabilly clubs in downtown Waterford. His city was an anomaly of time and space and almost too adorable to be real. Highschool kids tried in vain to escape the all-encompassing image of their parents. Yet, the influence and allure of classic cars, pizza joints and roller rinks proved inescapable for them all. It was their turf and out-of-towners, like the tourists who stared without apology and snapped pictures of the peculiar locals as though they were nothing more than landmarks, were unwelcome.

An emotional recovery was necessary after breaking up a knife fight in the alley behind the arcade. Twelve hours of leave would just barely be sufficient, assuming sleep could find Jake in time. It was stupid, really, ironic at best; that the young man who initiated the fight, who was born in Waterford, raised in Raleigh and adopted by displaced locals after his parents lost custody of him should be looked upon as an outsider. Darren Baako, born Darren Wilkins, could have been the posterchild for the town's youths. He had the bloodline, the surname in every history book to prove it and if that was not enough, he was the most promising athlete at Waterford High. Promising, but not celebrated. Those years of separation made him all the more isolated and when troubles cast on an already troubled young man, violent conflicts can arise.

Darren knew every officer in the precinct by name and they knew him, too. Why, they even had an overused radio codename for the kid: Curly Fry, which was derivative of the texture of his hair and well… there were mild disagreements over the second half. One possibility was the amount of marijuana that he had in his system during each arrest. The other, a bit more tame, was how he was constantly being hired, fired and rehired by every burger dive in town. The third, munchies. Whatever the case may be, Jake Casey would consider his nightly patrol to be a success if he received no trouble from Curly Fry and unfortunately, it was not the case this time.

He was dozing, barely snoring with his arms crossed over his chest, just grazing the pointed edges of his cold, metal badge. His eyes were still fatigued from the passing headlights and the bursts of neon glow in the downtown district. 4:45. The early-rising summer sun was just beginning to consider making its first appearance when a knock sounded on Jake's door. It was one of those "secret" knocks, the same one that every other family adopts as their own: two slow, three fast, two slow. He opened one eye, catching sight of the shadow on the wall beside his front door. Some waif in a hoopskirt with a book-filled tote slung beneath her arm. Her shadow rocked to and fro on an imperceptible beat. Marigold. Whatever it was that she wanted, it could wait until after sunrise. She knocked again, changing the pattern every now and then. Halfway through her interpretation of "Jingle Bells", one knock per note, she dropped her bag to the ground, leaned over and removed a noisy ring bursting with keys.

"You have got to be joking," Jake grumbled. One of her many keys was a fit. She twisted it with ease and the door swung wide open.

"Yoo-hoo!" The interloper sang, joyfully. It was too early for anyone to sound so cheerful. "Yoo-hoo!"

"Don't 'yoo-hoo' me, String Bean!" He rolled over just far enough for his sister to see his 'mean' face. "Jack has gotta stop making keys and handing them out to anyone and everyone willy-nilly."

Marigold skipped past the stacks of unpacked boxes and down the hallway with ease, as though she owned the place. "As long as you have over half of our inheritance in your crawlspace, Jack will have a key and I will have a key. It's as simple as that."

"You can have the damned books, Mare."

"And I will gladly accept the books!" Marigold smiled chipperly at her older brother as she pulled the overhanging cord from the ceiling in front of Jake's laundry room (laundry closet, rather). "Once I get in touch with my ex-husband and he frees up the space on my bookcase. Give me a boost, will you?" She stood, waiting for her brother to help her up. The ladder was too much of a hazard, missing well over half of its steps and the wood was split in three places down the side.

Jake would have stayed put and continued napping if Marigold was there for anything else, but he hated the idea of his sister spelunking on her elbows and knees through the cobwebs in his townhome's dusty attic. "Oh, no you don't," he pulled himself up with a grunt and went to help her, "what are you looking for?"

"The book about Virginia Hardwick, the little one. It should be with the files about the museum. Let me go up there with you, two minds are better than one and let's face it, your crawlspace is a damned jungle!"

"You're just saying that because you didn't organize it, Mare," through the itchy blur of webs, insect nests and crumpled spider corpses, Jake found the plastic box of documents. "I know right where it is. You still owe me for disturbing my slumber." In exchange for that comment, he heard Marigold's best impression of the giant, deep voiced tiger head from Aladdin, rising from below. It was passable, but annoying. "Don't tell me you're going to be bothering Tristan Stone with this manuscript. I've had enough trouble with that little boyfriend of hers recently. I can't stand another family feud."

The book was tossed carelessly from the edge of the crawlspace's entrance. "Holy cats, Jake! You can't hurl historic artifacts through the air, have some respect!"

Jake looked down at his sister, mocking her words with a sour smile, "Says the girl who used to steal authentic textiles from the museum's storage to make scrunchies and skirts. Don't blame Giselle. Everyone knows that it was you, darlin'."

"Whatever, Jake. And for the record, that little…" she crossed her arms and started to whisper, "don't speak ill of your students, don't speak ill of your students… that little… scallywag, Curly Fry, is not Tristan Stone's beau. She is too smart for a boy like that. Did you know that she is already studying for her SAT? I gave her a practice test last weekend and have never been so blown away by-"

"-she was his partner in crime four months ago! I still have both of their thumbprints on file. They were Waterford's own Bonny and Clyde." Jake swung down into the hall and started to wipe the dust from his uniform and, not accidentally, across Marigold's skirt and Suzy Q-style petticoat. "I know the psychology of teenagers just as well as you do, giving her a book that will tell her just how far back the Wilkins and Hardwicks go will open up a huge can of worms and several chum buckets-full of forgotten feelings."

"I disagree," Marigold slung her tousled blonde flyaways over her shoulder and slipped the book in her tote, "I think it's important to know where you come from. Tristan is my great success story. She is ivy league material and is headed for places far beyond Waterford, South Carolina. If Mama didn't decide to keep the book for the museum, it would have been rightfully given to a Hardwick long ago. I want to reward her for all of her efforts and what better gift is there than a tailor-made trip to the past to find out who you are?"

"What time do your office hours end?" Jake laughed as Marigold cocked her head to the side. "What greater gift is there for a sister to bring her brother before work, after waking him up at the ass-crack of dawn, no les, than a 31-ounce Americano? No cream, no sugar, none of that mocha-schmocha B.S. that the Martins started brewing to compete with Starbutts. Just piping hot and black as my heart. Preferably before 3:40 PM."

A fair enough trade. It was a little known fact that anyone with the Casey name would sell their soul for a decent cup of coffee. What Marigold did not tell her brother was that she was just as worked up over Tristan's behavior than he was over Darren's. Her grades were not an issue, they never were, but the respect that Tristan had for Marigold and everyone else on the faculty board, for that matter, left much to be desired. On top of her usual evening detention at South, Marigold had formally excused Tristan from fourth period home economics to come to her office. Reprimanding students was not her way, conversing with them and getting to the root of the problem was a bit more work, but well worth the effort. Tristan was punctual with her arrival and was prepared to work with Marigold, even apologize if it seemed fit, but she wanted to get her point across and knew that no other teacher would listen. Assuming she could get around her teacher's usual talkativeness.

"Miss Casey," the young girl said, briskly as she entered the office, which was more like a locking cubical with windows, really, "what I said to you yesterday about my essay was wrong. I just feel like I'm-" she nearly cringed to see Marigold roll towards her so giddily in her chair. Feelings! Her teacher was ridiculed by the students for being part hippy and part wannabe psychiatrist. She could discuss feelings until the cows came home! "I feel like I'm a hamster on a wheel. I'm putting all of my energy into these essays and getting nowhere. No matter what I do to revise them, you aren't pleased. You're supposed to be helping me and instead, you have become a roadblock."

Pain, real pain remained unhardened in Marigold's eyes. "Look," she pulled out a chair for Tristan, "you are a sophisticated writer. You know the formula that the state is looking for and how to plug the information into it. Probably better than any student I have ever tutored. I have no doubt that you are going to pass with flying colors and that is the gospel truth, Hercules!"

"Then why won't you let me take the test? Why do you keep holding me back?"

"Do you remember," Marigold asked, carefully, "the poem that you read at your 8th grade graduation? The one that we held here in the auditorium?" Tristan turned red. "Don't be embarrassed. I thought that it was phenomenal. At least until…"

"Until everyone started heckling me!"

"That's not an easy thing to recover from, believe me. I have been writing and reciting my own poetry for years now. But you can't let your authorial voice die. All that I am asking is to bring that passion, that whimsy into your essays. You can have all of the technical skills down to an art, but it is just another essay if it doesn't have heart!" As usual, Marigold was delighted by her accidental rhyme.

"You're weird," Tristan looked down at her feet. "I don't want to write poetry, Miss Casey. I want to go to college to be a physician and I don't stand a chance if my scores are anything but perfect."

"They will be. Trust me, they will. But before you settle on one style, I'd like to see you try another. No matter what you decide to do with your life, you will end up miserable if you don't push yourself out of your comfort zone every now and then. Just one essay, Tristan. That is all that I want to see. It can be about anything, your ambitions, your friends… I wonder," she reached for her tote beneath the desk, "are you still as curious about your family's lineage as you were when you were what… four?"

"Not really," Tristan shrugged. "The past is dead." She remained aloof, even after Marigold placed the book between them on the desk. But when she saw the title, interest surfaced for only a moment.

"This is yours. Now that the museum is gone, I am making it a goal of mine to return documents to their rightful owners. They don't belong out of sight and out of mind in my brother's crawlspace."

"We have a portrait of her in my living room," her pink lips worked into a smile as she touched the small book's binding, "apparently Virginia Hardwick and I were quite similar."

The cover was lifted and Marigold moved in to examine it alongside her pensive student, "I have an ancestor like that, too, you know. We all do, if we look back far enough. They don't have all of the answers, of course, but are a fine place to start if we find ourselves discouraged with our daily lives and uncertain of who we really are."

 **A/N: So, yes, this one definitely falls under the "short story" category; sort of a "three-chapter special" in the slightly bizarre narrative that I have going for this fandom. That said, it was a story that I wanted to flesh out for a long time and turned out to be one of my favorite projects. I'd like to dedicate this short story, if I can, to my sweet, talented, hilarious friend and fellow "loyalist", lokiandclonelover (yes, you!) as a "thank you" for following my stories so closely, reviewing them so thoughtfully, for encouraging me to continue with these creations despite how strange or sad they may become. Above all, thank for simply fangirling with me and making me feel a little less alone in this big, wide world web. Be sure to get Wilkins a bottomless carbonated beverage and maybe even some curly fries on me, the poor fellow has certainly earned it! =-P**


	4. Part 4

**A/N: So, I published this short story on my Tumblr last week and thought that it definitely had a place here in this "series" about James Wilkins and Virginia Hardwick. It briefly chronicles the lives of their reincarnates, Darren and Tristan and explores parts of their story that I had otherwise left out in my other pieces. Enjoy. X**

 **...**

 _Oh lover, I'll see you there_

 _Waiting in the willows with your autumn hair._

 _Oh lover, I'll see you there_

 _After many miles._

-The Ghost of Paul Revere, "After Many Miles"

She felt badly for him. Being plucked from his hometown at such a young age, tossed back and forth through the Carolinas by both of his parents and adopted by a new, local family before turning 15 would take a toll on anyone. Darren was no exception. They remembered one another from kindergarten and the beginning of grade school. This was before Tristan found her books and Darren found his plethora of varying interests, all leading to the same place—trouble. Cliques formed and grew in impenetrable mats long before the children who were part of them could realize how brutally the excluded one another. During open activities and recess, Tristan and Darren mixed with the others like oil and water and thus, gravitated towards one another.

Of course, they would find each other. Of course. The magnetism between them was centuries old and counting, altered only by their changing names and the sands of time. At their core, she was Hardwick and he was a Wilkins. That knowing, welcoming glance across the playground on the first day that they spoke would do more than enough to reopen that channel; it would allow them to let the other in and seal that nearly ancient bond. He felt badly for little Tristan, too, that day and so, he made that journey across the playground, unaware of what was being set in motion.

There was something about Tristian that Darren liked. His eyes would often drift to the mirror-like sheen of her obsidian hair that grew to her waist and hung above the floor as she sat, Indian-style, two students in front of him at story time. During other activities, she would sit across the room, always adjacent him, like the loyal, unwavering secondhand of a clock. He thought that she was beautiful, although he didn't quite understand this concept just yet. She reminded him of one of his mother's porcelain dolls, fair and round in face with dark eyes that glimmered with a permanent smile. Despite her modern attire of washed out overalls and t-shirts that were once neon but faded by the secondhand cycle for goodness knows how many years, Tristan had a timeless face, like one that you might find in an old-fashioned photograph or in the pages of a storybook.

Somehow, she had managed to hoist herself onto the tallest swing in the set beside the sandbox. She swung her feet, trying to move, but her little legs weren't powerful enough to give her flight. Thank heavens Darren was so tall! He moved in swiftly, giving her no more and no less than a reaffirming smile. He touched his hands flatly to her back, feeling the sharpness of her shoulder blades and her warm, soft body expanding with air. He might have been too young to comprehend it in full, but those moments of contact that they shared before she shot off into the air, as far away from him as the chains on the swing set would allow, revealed to Darren how precious and fragile she was.

Darren did not know. How could he possibly have known? That this was the same cycle that they had followed through in every life prior? He would have her for only a moment and then have to watch as she flew out of his grasp. Again and again. He held her steady before pushing her away, weaving his hands through the curtain of her long, black, strawberry-scented hair. Her tresses left behind a trail of sweetness on the breeze as she climbed upward into the cloudless sky. Most children would shout, "Higher! Higher!" But not Tristan. All that Darren could hear was a gentle, satisfied trill of laughter in those brief seconds that she was perched on his palms.

They remained in a world all their own until recess finally came to a close. Even after the bell rang, Darren gave Tristan not one, not two, but three tiny voyages across the sky before helping her back down onto the rough, brown earth. She continued to laugh, shyness stealing away most of the volume. The wind had ruffled her otherwise pristine hair and Darren watched with fondness as she patted it back into place, laughing with quiet breathlessness. The teacher shouted for them, but neither moved. At least, not until the moment that Tristan realized that she hadn't thanked him for the sweetest gesture any of her classmates had ever shown. He was easily three heads taller than any of the other boys his age and Tristan had to get up onto the tips of her toes to… well, once she decided what she was going to do, there was no stopping little Tristan Stone!

Spurts of laughter sounded from the perimeter of the playground where their classmates had assembled, dumping sand from their shoes and lining up for the fluoride-rich water of the drinking fountain. Darren didn't mind the ridicule. Neither of them did, really. The warm, partially damp brush of her lips against his cheek and the semi-tight wrapping of her arms around his waist were all that mattered, really. Many would argue that the human heart needs years of wear and tear, a certain accumulation of knowledge and understanding in order to feel love. I say that a heart knows how to love from its very first beat. What's more, his heart was made to love her, and it did. As her face disappeared against the netting of his jersey, Darren felt his chest begin to throb. It was a familiar pain, one that you might feel moments before crying. But he did not cry. All at once, joy rushed in to anesthetize that aching, making it fairer and identifiable only to those who have loved in full.

It would take years for Tristan to make that same discovery. She and Darren would play together until the day that he left Waterford for Raleigh. Once he was gone, she would find solace and friendship in the library. She never played again. But she also never forgot, despite the kinship that she formed with the consistent and unfailing characters of science and mathematics. Tristan never let go of the sweet, ephemeral memory of human contact. There were other boys in Waterford who tried to befriend her. The witty, charismatic lads of her junior high debate team and the young Einsteins of the science club. Any one of them could have easily filled the void in her heart, any one of them would have been a more compatible match, but it was not meant to be and so, fate saw to it that it merely did not happen.

Tristan's first weeks of high school passed in a blur. She rejected involvement of any kind, befriending only a handful of teachers and the exceptionally kind librarian who allowed her to have her lunch in the stacks. She was coming into her own, as anyone could see and no longer donned those overalls, t-shirts and cross trainers, stained red by the natural Carolina clay that collected on them as she trudged through the neighboring woods for her biology "experiments". Her part-time job as a docent at the Waterford Planetarium provided her with just enough income to acquire a collection of jeans, jean jackets and eyeliner, all in varying shades of grey and black. Unapproachability, that was what she thrived for and she did not disappoint.

One late afternoon, several months into her freshman year, Tristan was scrambling from the heart of the library to where its exit met the hallway. Her lunch period had ended over five minutes ago and she had missed the transition bell's chime from over her headphones and grey hood. The next grouping of students were already migrating down the hall to the cafeteria and a noisy cluster of boys wearing their brand new letterman jackets cut her off. They grouped around a table by the computers, dumping cans of Pringles of every variety across the surface and hardly paying any mind to the pieces that had fallen onto the carpet.

"You aren't supposed to be in here," Tristan growled, "there's a geography class going on by the maps two stacks over."

The boys elected their candidate to scare Tristan off, a portly bully by the name of Chris, nicknamed "Crispy" by the others. Not only was the freckled redhead with a permanent scowl intimidating, he knew how to identify just about anyone's weakness and cut straight to their heart with very few words. "We can go anywhere we want!" He gave her an ugly glare. "Unlike you. Hiding in the library at lunch because you don't have any friends. How pathetic!"

The other boys munched rudely at their Pringles, one initiated a quarrel by pulling a vial of Sriracha from his sleeve, soiling the smorgasbord and drenching the table with bright red. They were perfectly intent on watching the 'show', save for one. Darren watched at the center of the group with a straight face as Tristan's large, dark eyes filled with unconcealable pain. She stood her ground for a moment more, staring daggers at each glutenous jock. She didn't break contact once to look at the floor or shed a tear, but as their laughter swelled, she stepped back. Darren stood immediately. What his next step would be, shush his friends or go after her, he could not tell. Tristan looked at him last, confused by how familiar he was, pained by how unpleasant the reunion with her one friend was turning out to be.

"What?!" Was the single, defensive word that she gave him before storming away.

…

At the heart of the many customs that Waterford observed in early autumn was a dizzying cavalcade of monthly fairs that took over the parks before the air turned cold. Most high school students would attend the festivities on weekend evenings and nights to cause mischief. Darren would go almost every night with his friends to steal prizes, corndogs and bags of cotton candy when the adults weren't looking. He had barely managed to weasel his way out of a reprimand from Officer Jake Casey when he saw her, thus abandoning the other lettermans in a heartbeat. He ducked into the woods and that was where he stayed.

She must have been the only person alive to read a book on the swing carousel. While the others were pointing at their homes and famous landmarks on the horizon or waving at their friends and family from above, Tristan was beautifully stoic, turning each page with hair raven hair billowing behind her in spirals like a satin, ebony scarf. He watched the way her feet swung to and fro, how her white ankles arced above the sides of her black canvas shoes, how she gnawed occasionally on the corner of her unpolished thumbnail and above all, how natural she looked, flying higher and higher into the slate-colored dusk. When the swings reached the ground once more, Tristan kept her eyes fixed on the pages of her book. Without so much as a stumble or a struggle for balance, she moved away from the illuminated microcity of blinking lights and clashing, tinny music and towards the green patch of nature that Darren was hiding amongst.

He ducked lower to the ground, keeping his eyes on her shadowy form so that she would not fall completely from his view. Several yards into the greenery, Tristan located the flat, mossy surface of a fallen tree and stretched across it, tossing her hair so that it hung over the sides. The book remained open across her stomach, rising up and down as she took in the fresh air. The crunching leaves and snapping branches beneath Darren's feet gave away his location and she shot upright, turned and captured him with her dark stare before he could escape.

"You, uh… you like swings, huh?" He interjected before she had the chance to tell him to leave.

Not only was she irritated, she was confused by this observation. "What?"

"Last time I saw you, you were really into swings and now that I am talking to you again… well," Darren gestured awkwardly to the fairground as it flickered and danced from behind the foliage, "uh… swings."

Her forehead creased, "I don't get it." Silence. Awkward, awkward silence. "The last time that you 'talked' to me, you were letting that jockass Crispy tear into me in the library." Darren began to chuckle, making Tristan all the more defensive. "What?!"

"Jockass." He stood with his arms across his chest for a moment before approaching her. "I might have to use that one! He is a… he is a jockass. So am I, I guess."

"You guess?! Look. I hate to sound rude or whatever, but this is Tristan Time." The moment that Darren arched his handsome eyebrow, Tristan mellowed out. At least, on the inside. "Meaning 'me time'. Meaning I have two more hours until curfew where I return to my shitty homelife with my crazy mom, belligerent father and a room full of parakeets that we inherited when gramps kicked the bucket."

"You're joking," Darren released the most agreeable laugh that Tristan had ever heard before. Miraculously, they exchanged and held smiles for longer than a moment and the awkwardness was simply forgotten. "I'll let you have your Tristan Time, then."

As he turned to leave, the name on the back of his jacket revealed itself. "I thought your last name was Wilkins." Tristan said, if only to make conversation with him a while longer. She regretted it instantly. Not because he continued to walk, but because when he faced her again to answer, his face, the most handsome face that she had ever seen, donned an expression that she did not mean to ignite. "That was dumb of me, wasn't it?"

"No," Darren shrugged, "and it was Wilkins. But it isn't anymore."

"Well, now that I've completely made a jockass of myself-"

"You didn't. Trust me, it's okay. You weren't the first person to ask me about it since I came back. You're also, coincidentally, the only person who I don't mind talking to about it. But only if you think that it's okay for… someone like you to talk to someone like me."

Tristan could feel her face going red, "Someone like me?! You mean a friendless loser who has to eat lunch in the library because-"

He gave his curly head a shake and grinned, "What I mean to say is… if an angel like you can talk to a jockass like me. If you think that you could, well, then, you will never have to eat lunch alone ever again."

She let it all sink in, the peacefulness of the woods, the music echoing from the distant fairground, the stunning reality that she was alone in a dark, cold place with a boy. A beautiful, strong, charming boy who she longed to trust and hold, maybe even love should her conscience allow it. Tristan studied him closely, hunting for any indication that this was nothing more than a prank. "What about your friends?"

"The team?" Darren moved to the edge of the fallen tree and after no more than a moment's hesitation, he sat beside her. "Just because we get all overly enthusiastic about throwing a lump of pigskin around a field and beating the snot out of one another… that doesn't make us friends. I know a thing or two about being lonely, Tristan Stone and I have a feeling that you do, too."

Tristan didn't want to be defensive, but that was where she found her comfort and strength. "Because I'm a loner."

"Because you are reading alone in the woods while everyone else in Waterford is… watching that epic barf chain that Tommy Martin started on the zipper ride." He saw her confusion and let it fuel his explanation. "It's pretty sick! One person- Tommy, naturally… pukes on the ride. Whether he was really nauseated or just trying to be a jerk is unclear. I, for one, think that he knew what he was doing. But it moves from cage to cage and ends up being this really sick chain reaction-"

"-okay! That's totally disgusting!"

Darren could feel his nerves begin to tangle. "Sorry. Guy talk." He was about to blush and apologize a second time, when Tristan bumped his shoulder. It was purposeful, a friendly jostle, but his confidence remained dashed.

"Is that really happening out there?"

"Yeah."

"Well, in that case, would you like to…" her eyes meandered through the senseless maze of trees that were only just beginning to rust in the cold… "do you know how to…"

"Yes. What you're looking at is only about a quarter of a mile of woodland. If we follow it straight, we'll end up in the cemetery. Trust me. I'm a dude. I used to play in these woods all the time! So, unless you are afraid of the dark or are more superstitious than you let on…" he sensed her glaring again, "I only mean that you're smart, Tristan. That is all."

She put her guard down and trusted him before she let it show. He had stated his case and Tristan believed. There was no reason to remain on the fence, but she kept quiet and reserved for the first minute or so of motion. The bead on the end of her bookmark knocked against the hardback book cover as they walked. Frogs and crickets chattered in the maze of foliage and rotted wood and the sounds of the fair were swallowed whole by nature. There were so many questions on the tip of her tongue, leagues of depth that they both longed to explore. It took a fluttering leaf, one of the first golden messengers of fall to land on her shoulder for Darren to remove and speak once more.

"Strawberry," he smiled sideways. "You haven't changed a bit."

Tristan laughed uneasily and shoved her one free hand deep into her pocket. "I don't know what you mean."

"You smell nice, okay? You always have. I remember when I used to push you on the swings… It's just a silly thing that I never forgot, I guess. Strawberry… shampoo, I assume?"

"Detangler," her laughs moved inward, and she blushed at forest floor. "Kid's detangler. When you find something that works… you know?!"

"Maybe I should try it and consider it advice from an expert!" Darren smiled. "It couldn't hurt! Coach told me that my hair looks like a Brillo Pad the other day! But you…"

If this wasn't flirting, Tristan surely needed to alter her working definition. She would normally roll her eyes and walk away from such behavior, but hearing that he not only remembered her, but had treasured something as insignificant as the fragrance on her hair for all of those many years flattered her beyond words.

"So, will you take me up on my offer, Tristan? We could always do a trial period and if you find that my presence interferes with your studies…" his brain was chugging away at 500 miles an hour, trying to piece his sentence together as best he could. Much to his dismay, she was laughing again! "What's so funny?"

"We don't have the same lunch period, dummy! I was running late for class when you and your minions came into the library! But that doesn't mean that we can't-"

"-I'll state my case before Principal Ballard, then!"

Tristan's fit of laughter reached a new height. "Having different lunch periods doesn't mean that we can't be friends! Unless I missed something when I 'checked out' of high school on the first day of class. Socially speaking. But I do… no. You wouldn't be interested…" He leaned in even closer than before. "I do like to collect samples at the lake after class. Maybe you could come along and… I don't know. That might mean skipping practice. But on days when you get out a little early."

"I'll be there," Darren confirmed without hesitation.

"And let us not forget, we do have multimedia together! We could always team up for the documentary project. That is, if you don't have a partner yet."

He winced. Multimedia was the most coveted elective at Waterford High and had over forty students. The entire football team was enrolled. He knew that she was in there, of course. He always knew when Tristan was nearby, but never approached her. None of that mattered now. "I don't have a partner yet."

"I already have some footage, but it's not very good. Mrs. Laramie said that I could work on the project alone and well, filming by yourself with a makeshift tripod results in a Blair Witch Project kind of an effect. If you get what I'm saying…" she looked ahead, the tall, wrought iron gates of the cemetery could be seen in the distance.

"Do you know what might be fun?!" He caught Tristan's sideways glance and was glad. "If we make a mockumentary of The Blair Witch Project! I mean… Waterford has some pretty scary woodlands and if we shoot through the fall and into the winter, we will have the warmer seasons for fun stuff like… I don't know…"

"Editing outside?" Tristan joked. "That's brilliant! The kids on that show always annoyed me so much, anyway! Like… I get that conflict is important, but they just turned into a bunch of whiny little infants. And it was tragically overacted. They got what they deserved, if you ask me."

"We could call it… The Scared Bitch Project! And just like… yell and curse at one another for the bulk of the film!" She jostled his shoulder again and Darren smiled this time. He also realized that she was beginning to shiver in the cold. "Would you like my jacket?"

"That's a little cheesy, don't you think?" Her nose wrinkled with laughter. "On the contrary, I like the cold and was thinking about brainstorming our little opus together in the cemetery for a while! That is, if you aren't too much of a baby!" Truth be told, the icy evening breeze was beginning to burn her skin. The last couple of yards of their trek, she broke into a sprint. "Race ya!"

By day, the cemetery was colorful and well kept. Waterford treated its dead with as much dignity as it did its living. At its heart was a small white chapel, a lake and a flower garden. There were no forgotten graves in Waterford and the staff saw to it that every plot and tombstone received a fresh bunch of flowers at the beginning of each week. Therefore, by night, despite the few trees that were already bare and the big, harvest moon that cast both shadow and light on the ground below, it was anything but frightening. Tristan caught her breath and started to wander, perusing the rows of familiar surnames. Darren let her win, of course and waited several paces behind for her blood to stop pumping so violently and the cold to return to her body. She shivered only once and he was there, his hand touched the soft framework of her back, the exact place that he used to touch over and over again as he pushed her on the swings.

He lowered his lips to her ear, breathing her in. She smelled like strawberries and something else, a combination of woodfire and funnel cake from the fair. "May I hold you?" Tristan laughed in response, no more, no less. It was the same laugh that he recalled from their days on the playground, sweet and light.

As Tristan relaxed into his arms, Darren brushed his lips against her right cheek, mere inches from her lips, breathed and kissed its blushing flesh. He had remembered it all, and so did she. The innocence, the joy, the thrilling sensation of flight. In the opening of his jacket, between those layers of mesh school colors, she found his beating heart, his lifeforce, his warmth and there she remained, merely listening and breathing. There is something about standing, surrounded by the dead, that causes one to see life for the gift that it is. Every heartbeat guided her closer to the place that Darren had found all of those years ago. She, too, understood his fragility. She, too, understood how this single moment could possess such levity and gravity. All at once, a hurricane of pain ripped through her heart and before the emotion could bring her to tears, a warm calm washed over the wreckage.

…

"No regrets" would come to be their mantra. Those words resounded in Tristan's heart like the sweet chiming of a bell most days and the clanging of an alarm on the day that Darren nearly pushed her away forever. They would be so close one moment, it seemed, and miles apart the next. What they sought after that night was closeness. Distance was all that they received. He seemed content, holding her steady on a soft patch of moss and decaying leaves that had spent the winter on the forest floor, churning and warming in the spring. His gaze was loving and overbearing all at once, so she looked across the dark woodland to the culprit that had started it all, a thin, leather-bound book that neighbored their low-burning lantern. It's amazing how something so small can set so many events in motion.

"I don't need some book to tell me that you are my destiny, you know?" Hearing that truth come alive on his tongue, that was what caused her to surrender. He knew that the book and those words were still on her mind. Perhaps if he could find another pretty phrase other than the endless question, "Are you okay?", she would give him a kiss, a smile, anything to let him know that she was still present, that she was still his. As it was, they remained suspended in midair, frozen in that moment, locked inside that dropping feeling we all get in the pit of our stomachs after swinging as high as we possibly can and knowing what is to come—a freefall, faster and more thrilling than all the ones before. "Do you remember what I told you," Darren asked, still shyly fixated upon the naked flesh that bridged her collarbone and throat. His eyes had wandered lower only once, before their very first intimate encounter. They thought it would be heaven. Instead, it was nothing more than a humiliatingly clumsy five minutes of adrenaline and unanticipated pain. "Do you? When I took you to the arcade last Friday?"

That seemed like years ago. He told her that he loved her. Nobody had ever said such a thing to Tristan before and yet, that memory had been so brutally overshadowed by the book that Miss Casey had given her. Simply passed to her in her office as though it were nothing at all, as though its previous owner didn't understand the power that it possessed. Darren didn't either. Even now, as they waited in this limbo for the glaringly red disorientation of passion to exit their veins, Tristan could see who they were before. He could not hold her without evoking the image of poor James Wilkins kneeling in an open grave, thrown across Virginia's wooden coffin. If he could truly read her mind, a skill that they had speculated in jest that the other one might possess on more than one occasion, he would have refrained from what he did next.

The blue shade of twilight combined with the rippling of overhanging leaves and branches cast a beautiful spell upon her body. From his place above her, she appeared to be made entirely of crystalline ocean water and indeed, she had cooled and calmed in the breeze and by the steady passage of time. Once he descended, the side of his burning face sunk into her shallow breast. Those dark, chaotic curls of his found her lips and nose. He couldn't see her face and so, she cried a secret tear or two into his soft hair. She might have smiled. Not only had he taken her "recommendation" for the strawberry detangler, it hadn't made any difference and his locks were even puffier than before. She worked them backwards, away from his brow and kissed the center of his forehead.

"You believed me, didn't you?" Darren asked, holding her even closer than before. His eyes were closed. His face, peaceful. He would have hated the association, but Tristan couldn't help but believe that he was an angel. "Because it was true. You remind everyday that there is beauty in this ugly world. Just by being you. How could I not love you?"

She hid her face again. He had only skimmed the book before tossing it aside and into a pile of notes and discarded memory chips from their camera. The possibilities of locating and referencing any of its lines were slim and Darren knew how troubled she was by its words. He would have known better than to speak the final sentiment that James Wilkins had given to his Virginia before he rode away to live out the remainder of his life without her. There was no explaining the growing pain inside of her. She did not want that destiny, to die young by his hand and a cruel twist of fate.

She had ambitions that stretched far beyond Waterford, an early engagement and an early grave. But he had her heart for far longer than she had cared to reveal. Now, her virtue and body were his, too. All that she had left to give away were those dreams of medical school, exploring, learning and simply continuing to be a small girl in love with the big, wide world. All that she had left to give was Tristan. Her soul. "I remember," her whisper quaked, raw and real, "and I will never forget because it was all that I ever wanted to hear."

She watched him move, just far enough to look upon his love and take her in. She knew that he was handsome before, certainly. But the broadness of his bare, suntanned shoulders, the precious structuring of his soft lips, tiny nose and visibly eyelashed eyes were beyond perfection in the low light. "I don't know if I can say it, Darren. I can feel it inside of me, breaking me apart bit by bit every day from the moment we first met. I'm afraid that if I tell you how much I love you, I might collapse into myself and bring all of creation from the nearest leaf on the nearest tree to the most distant star down with me. How can I possibly define it all? Those raging titans and singing angels? The chaos and the calm? All in a single word? Every time I look at you, I wonder what I did to deserve such a curse. Such a cruel paradox. To be eaten alive, wounded to the brink of death and resurrected so that I might feel the pain all over again the very next day. Why? Why does it hurt to love you?"

Despite the tenderness of his smile, that same pain was reflected on Darren's face. "I don't want to talk about this anymore," he whispered as tears began glaze over his eyes. "I just want to hold you and love you and take you to the arcade on Friday nights. I don't want to hurt you!" He hid his tears, unsuccessfully, by descending onto the pale platform of her chest. Tristan grew quiet and simply held his naked, muscular body as he cried. It was the strangest, sweetest secret that she had ever shared. That someone so strong could be so vulnerable and perhaps even, wounded, at her expense.

…

I could tell you that nothing lasts forever. You might agree. Hell, I probably would, too. But that is not the moral of this story. In fact, the seemingly brief assembly of seasons that Darren shared with Tristan was part of a grander clockwork, older than the oldest grave in Waterford. Yet, at the time it appeared to be the beginning of the end. Social pressures caused them to quarrel. But those minor arguments over making plans and time for one another were not forceful enough to pull them apart. What started with a quarrel between Tristan's parents, a mindless insult that created a domino effect inside of her home, however, was.

When lost in a daze of liquor and frustration with years of joblessness, her father pulled a small, black handgun on his wife and daughter from across the dinner table. She trusted Darren more than anyone in the city, anyone in the world. After pocketing the weapon and driving her mother to the safest place that she could find, a roadside motel near Charleston, Tristan sought her own brand of safety. The whole way back to Waterford, Tristan saw red. She hated herself for lying to her mother and using the minor billing issue at reception as a cover for stealing the car, but she needed him. He would be in practice until early that evening. When playing football, the game came first, and Tristan would have to wait until he was through with either celebrating his wins, bemoaning his losses or nursing new wounds that he was too frightened to let her see. That was usually the case, anyway.

The team was taking a break when she arrived, and she saw her chance to pull him away. "I need you right now," Tristan demanded without hesitation, "it's an emergency."

Darren was winded from running, partially collapsed on the bleacher nearest the ground. "Yeah, well, it better be," he groaned and rose one eyeroll and melodramatic stretch later. "Did Coach really let you back here."

"I don't know. I ran past him. Please just come with me somewhere private before you have to go back."

They knew one another's expressions, the varying shadows that fell on their faces to coincide with whatever they were feeling. She knew that practice was not going well, that his grades were falling and what's more, hers were, too. They were both cracking under pressure and imagined that they were losing each other in the process.

"We'll have to talk on the bleachers. Coach told us not to leave this spot. He's on the phone with Charleston High-"

"It's my father."

Darren's face blanched with severity, but no more than a fraction. The only distance that he gave their conversation from the team was several yards. On the highest point of the stadium bleachers, they tested just how far their devotion to one another could stretch.

"He threatened to kill us," she said as Darren's eyes dropped to his feet. It was a weight that she did not want him to bear. But to be clear, she needed him. She removed the gun from her pocket, moving it directly into his field of vision. "I took this. I don't know what to do! As much as I hate him, I hate this thing more. I hate having it in my pocket and feeling it in my hand. Could you please, please tell me how to get rid of it?"

In the corner of his eye, Darren could see his coach and team. He didn't know what consequences awaited him if anyone saw the weapon, but he knew that they would be severe. "You brought a gun to the field?! Why didn't you just put it someplace safe?! My God, Tristan! How could you be so idiotic?"

"I don't know! I really don't know! I'm sorry, Darren! I am so, so sorry!" Her panicked cry and eruption of tears caused the boys on the field to turn and stare. "Take it! Please just take it from me! I can't hold it anymore!" The release that she felt as he accepted her burden as his own was sweet but brief. The gun might have been out of her hands, but not without that single, fateful push that sent her flying through the air and out of his reach.

Darren didn't care to pocket the unloaded weapon, it remained in his hand for all the world to see. The fall to the cemented dugout would have killed her. If not, paralyze her for good. Before she reached the ground, fate, if you would even call it that, intervened and she vanished without a trace.

Where Tristan went and what she saw is a different story entirely. After she was found, alive and disoriented on the other side of town, she was taken to the hospital to be examined. All that she wanted and needed was Darren. When she learned where the handgun and the panic that she had invoked by giving it to him had led him, a new pain, sharper than all the others, split her heart in two. He was not Darren the day that he pushed her from the bleachers. She alone had caused something dark to awaken inside of him, a chain of confusion and anger that somehow brought him to perform the irrevocable act of shooting Miss Casey. She blamed herself for who he had become and, in turn, for what would become of him. Perhaps she was right the first time. Perhaps all that they shared was a curse masquerading as love.

She saw her chance and took it. An open bathroom door and a temporarily abandoned medicine cart. One by one she sent each pill on a cool cascade of water to the pit of her stomach to silence the pain forever. It was not a violent ritual at all. It was slow, methodical and numbing. But by the time the last pill in the bottle was swallowed, Tristan broke free from her sorrowful trance. Before she believed that her love for Darren was eating her alive and would destroy her heart if she carried it one day longer. It would take a toxin, an excruciating cyclone of destruction to prove that it was the pain of love that was holding her together all along.

She did not want to die. But there was no going back. Her final word would have been a scream for help, a cry for Darren, but it was swallowed by the poison, stinging and frothing on her lips. When she was found, it had evaporated along with the panic in her eyes and the pain in her heart. It would take a displaced and perhaps even indifferent eye to see it. The intern who found her and her grief-stricken mother certainly did not. But the way that she had fallen from the sink to the ground, the paralysis that her body had worked itself into and the turns and spirals of her hair upon the tiles suggested the image of flight. It was in flight and silence that she would remain until he found her again.

Darren was moved to solitary. Not for punishment, but out of sympathy from the staff. In the days, weeks and even months following Tristan's death, he could hardly move or speak. Precautions had been taken, but he was just as desperate as she and devised a plan that he would follow through with the moment that his strength returned. Above his head, there glowed a light, hardwired and hanging from the ceiling. The electrical pipe that it was rooted to would be strong enough to anchor his noose. From above, he would find the same peace that he had given Tristan when she was only a child. He would swing. Like a weightless pendulum, he would swing. In that motion, he would find his serenity. Whether left or right, to or fro did not matter because he knew that the moment that his life escaped his body, whether by broken neck or asphyxiation, there would be a motion in that sad display of rocking and turning that would deliver him to Tristan's arms.

Glassy-eyed and overcome with ambition, he emptied his pillowcase, removed the sheet from his bed and started to rip. He joined the shreds in a hard, tight braid and did not stop until he was certain that the rope could hold him. All that he saw was Tristan as he worked. All that he knew was that she had ended her life in the hospital after their fight. The "how" did not matter. Finding her and holding her forever, that was what drove him to move the bed and stand at the end of its wobbly, metal headboard. He was so convinced that everything else in the world had fallen away with Tristan's final heartbeat that he did not notice the door flying open or the strong arms that pulled him from the precipice in that last moment.

"Dammit, Curly Fry!"

He knew that voice but was already so far gone that it seemed to be coming from the other side of the veil. Let me clear, Darren had not fallen. Jake Casey had saved him just in time. Stunned and lost in a trance of grief, the boy collapsed in the officer's arms. He did not need solitary confinement or to be put on suicide watch, what Darren needed was to be held and Jake did not let go. His trembling transitioned into tears and the seemingly invincible boy cried himself to sleep against Jake's blue jacket. What Darren did not know was that his bail had been posted that same day and that Officer Casey had come to retrieve him from the cell.

Waking up, Darren did not know what he would find. A hospital bed on the other side of town, however, was hardly what he intended to see. As was Jake who sat in the bedside chair, handling two long-stemmed roses, one red and one white.

"You should have let me," his eyes sharpened more and more as he awoke, "I wanted to swing and that's my right." If it was a fight that he wanted, and Darren hardly knew what he was after, Jake did not deliver. "What's with the roses?"

The officer shrugged, straight-faced. "My sister gave Tristan that book. I know I don't look like much of a reader, but I know about the tradition." He let out a small laugh. This was the first time that Darren had ever seen him smile. "Of what a Wilkins must give a Hardwick when they stand at their grave." The boy's eyes widened, and he shook his head, all vulnerability and fear. "Be a man, Son! If not for Tristan, then for the woman who posted your bail!" Darren looked closer, fearing what he knew he would have to ask, dreading the answer that he might hear. "I will take you to see Miss Stone when you are ready. The red one is for her. But after the hell that I have gone through with her husband, trying to overturn what my sister wrote so clearly in her will…"

It was heartbreak all over again, a freefall. Shooting Marigold was what led to his incarceration. He only received the sentence he did because she had survived and fought so ardently in her student's favor. "Her will?" Jake could see the devastation in his eyes and moved closer. "It was because of me, wasn't it? Because of what I did to her?"

"No. There were many things, both wonderful and sad that happened to my sister since the last time that you saw her. People fight secret battles, you see. She entered into one of those battles long ago, even before she became your teacher. She thought that she was in the clear and tried to start a family of her own but… wars break us down, Son. Wars that we wage on ourselves, especially. You must have meant the world to my sister for her to have your bail and college admission fees so high on her will. Right alongside her own daughter, no less! You are a free man now. But only if you allow yourself to be. Marigold would have you finish school and return to doing what you love. I didn't know Miss Stone too well, but I have a feeling that she would want the same for you. Will you come with me to see them?"

When he extended his hand, Darren's eyes were so thick with tears that he could hardly see where he was reaching but as the stem of each rose brushed his fingertips, there was some clarity. It was as though he had reached through the atmosphere and space, all the way to heaven and touched the hand of each woman that the roses represented. Joyful and selfless Marigold. Radiant and scholarly Tristan. "I will."

It was late Autumn. Seasons and time lose their meaning in prison and Darren hardly anticipated the chill in the air and the goldening of leaves. The petals of the white rose seemed to resemble a flag of surrender, stark and peculiar when he placed it beside the simple arrangement of marigold flowers at his former teacher's grave. He looked closer, nearly missing another gift, a single red rose like the one that he held in his hand with a pretty yellow ribbon and love note that her husband had left beneath her epitaph, 'Joyful Always'. Somewhere in Waterford, another man was in mourning. A man who would have preferred to see Darren incarcerated for the rest of his life. His wish was more than justified. Before leaving Jake with his sister, he vowed silently to one day shake Mr. Tavington's hand and find the means to show him and his daughter the same love and charity that Marigold had always shown her students.

Tristan's grave was older, but the black stone remained polished and bright. A wilted cluster of sunflowers rested on the mound where tiny blades of grass had started to grow and died after the first frost. He listened, hearing only silence. The world had stopped turning, the trees had stopped breathing, the city ceased to produce noise. Everything about her resting place was silent and vacant. That is, until the rose touched the ground and his memory shot to life. He could hear her laughter, smell her hair and feel her warmth for a single moment and then it was gone. He would have to remain there with his feet on the ground, just as he always had. With a memory of her touch and a vision of her beauty as she moved across the sky and he waited below loyally, for her return.


End file.
